Here is where our confusion lies: the interest payment that you refer to that is equal to 9% of revenues, is just that: interest only. On the principal side, you have redemptions of bonds and bills that fall due. These obligations must be replaced by an equivalent principal amount of new issuances, PLUS an extra $60 billion per month of new issuances to fund the ~$700 billion run rate on the current budget deficit. It is that additional $700B/year or $60B/month that cannot be issued unless the debt ceiling is increased. It's not like they can cut, say $10B/month. The Teasury cannot owe more than $15.* trillion under the current debt ceiling. Treasury indebtedness cannot legally exceed the debt ceiling by so much as one dollar.
A detailed, current explanation of this is located here
So a few billion in cost to fight this monstrosity? You bet! That's an easy decision.
Thank you, I will look at the linked information. Yes, I am saying that the President would have to prioritize payments to the tune of tens of billions of dollars each month until the debt ceiling is increased. And yes, that would presumably have a massive effect on the economy. I don’t think he would have any choice in the matter except to determine which otherwise required expenditures not to pay. I am not sure this is matter of confusion more than just different views about whether a) the President has such authority, and/or b) whether this is at all practical or whether the numbers are so high that this would be catastrophic for the economy. But I don’t think that failing to pay anything other than interest or maturing securities would be a “default”. How much of the budget beyond this is actual bills (for example, the government entered into a contract to pay someone a certain amount on a certain date) as opposed to other required expenditures, such as for entitlements or running the government or funding a program...? I don’t know the answer to that, and that could be a difficult distinction to draw in some cases, but I think that one of the disconnects in the media and among politicians in discussing this involves the meaning of “default”.